For many years, science fiction writers have challenged readers with visions of the future and future society. These authors offered an insight into what they expected man, society, and life to be like at some future time. One could divide their visions of future into two main streams: an apocalyptical one, with the degradation and demoralization of our society, and a utopian world, where our civilization turns into a highly conscious and developed one, and people live in perfect harmony.
Today one can state that we live in a highly developed society, where science can be encountered everywhere. For the past two centuries, our world has drastically changed with the development of nuclear physics and chemistry. Major countries possess weaponry that can completely annihilate Earth multiple times (if that was possible). No wonder that while living on the verge of such technological progress it makes people wonder what is going to happen in the future. Though apocalyptical theories have a certain background, I do not think that they have an actual chance to become truth.
If one would carefully analyze everything what has happened to humanity over the past 30 centuries he would see that so many mistakes were made by our leaders because of power-greed blinded eyes, and so many people were mistreated and suffered because of someone's sick will, that if it did not happen we would probably live in one of those utopian societies. However, I think that those things were only natural for the human world development - as everyone makes mistakes in live and learns from them, it would be the same but on a bigger scale. It is naturally programmed in a human being to try to get more then he is able, even if it causes mistreatment of others. If all those things did not happen, we would not completely understand the importance of "golden rule" in the world - or the importance of treating other people as if we would like to be treated by ourselves.